EAST COBB, Ga. — This weekend marks the 10th Global Big Latch On, and people across Cobb County are hoping to break last year’s record.
“Basically, we get women who are breastfeeding or pumping,” Aleah Walker, a breastfeeding peer counselor supervisor for Cobb and Douglas public health WIC, said. “We get them together simultaneously to break a record to have multiple women breastfeeding at the same exact time around the world at 10:30 a.m.”
According to BigLatchOn.org, nearly 60,000 people participated around the world in 2018, and we should know within the next couple weeks if the record was a successfully broken. Emily Trenbeath is one of the people hoping to break the record. She’s hosting her own Big Latch On event this Saturday, August 3.
“This is the second one that I’ve hosted, the second year in a row,” she said, “It's at the Mountain View Regional Library on Shallowford Road, and it's going to be at 10 a.m.”
Trenbeath and Walker agree – there are many benefits to breastfeeding.
“Basically, the babies are healthier,” Walker said. “They tend to have less ear infections. It's healthier for their gut. It's made for them. Human milk is made for human babies. For the mothers, there’s a benefit too including reducing certain types of cancer.”
“Mom's health, her statistical risk of getting breast cancer is reduced by 25% if she nurses 25 months or longer,” Trenbeath said. “Breastfeeding is the biological norm. It's great not only for babies but for moms.”
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